


Shattered Pieces

by oscarwilderobbieross



Series: Wintersoldier!Bard [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Recovery, WS!Bard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3654180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscarwilderobbieross/pseuds/oscarwilderobbieross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took time to break a dedicated man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattered Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Another addition to my WS!Bard series, hopefully this piece will be the breakthrough of my writing block.

After a raid of Azog and his gang, the leader of Dale had gone up in smoke. He was assumed dead, but Thranduil had never really stopped hoping, even if all search parties were told to return. It was seen as a simple but effective strike against Mirkwood, to win territory, to put his strongest enemy out of commission for a while.

 

But the truth had been so much darker.

 

Bard was tied up in a dark, cold room, his knees scraped and bloody on the concrete. His vision was swimming, and a shiver went through him. He tried to focus, but his head was throbbing. He let out a trembling sigh, looking up at the light flooding in with a opened door.

 

Even without his vision, he would always be able to recognize the voice that was suddenly very close to his ear. “Hello Bowman.. I’m sorry for this rough welcome, but it’s all for a good cause, I promise.”

 

After that, everything he could remember was pain. Pain and the same words over and over.

 

_You belong to us. You will work for us._

 

He would repeat it, it seemed to be the only thing to make the pain stop, the only thing that let him hang on to his sanity, while it just drove him further away from himself.

 

In the end, nothing of him remained, and he was a puppet trapped in his own mind. He was trained to fire a gun without thinking about it, seeing nothing but targets and the leaders that provided them.

 

Some nights, he would be scared, like he was reaching for something that was just out of his reach. Long, silver hair slipping through his fingers, a laugh warming his insides just before he woke. It confused him, but the damage was already done, and he never managed to get close enough.

 

\--

 

Once he remembered, and they left him alone in that room, he wanted to die. He would scream constantly, like he remembered the pain he had caused, and he felt all of it. Sometimes he would just lay on the concrete floor, in the borrowed clothes that were too big for him, sometimes he would cry.

 

Thranduil wanted to comfort him, but they wouldn't let him. They said he was still hostile, dangerous. He couldn't imagine it, only seeing the gentle man who would always beg him for an extra hour in the bed they shared. Sometimes he would sit outside the room for hours, sometimes he didn't want to see him, the shadow of the man he loved. 

 

The children would come to him for comfort, which was something he could barely offer. He was suffering like they were, their father so close but such a stranger. With his lover so close, and further away than he had ever been.

 

During particularly lonely moments he would wonder if it had been better if the man had died. It would have given him some closure, and not this agony of not knowing whether the man would recover from his fragile state.

 

But the tears on his cheeks would always prove him wrong, would always tell him that he wasn’t ready to say goodbye, and that this was a question of hope, not despair.


End file.
